Guide to Training: Mission: Critical

Social networking. How to do
more with less. Helping employees deal with trying times. Transforming
the corporate culture. Finding what makes employees tick.

These are just some of the trends in training and professional development today.

When
the economy was booming, corporations and individuals built businesses
based, in large part, on training for employees that drove workers and
the company to greater heights.

The financial
quake of 2008 left deep economic fissures, and businesses began
re-evaluating everything. In terms of training, the question became: Is
it mission-critical?

"With the downturn in the
economy, organizations really got a shock, and they pulled back
extensively on investment in people, especially training investment,"
says Rosaleena Marcellus, principal partner of client solutions at
Global Novations LLC in Sharonville. Her company, with more than 30
years in business, helps organizations develop talent.

Now,
as the economy appears to be moving toward recovery, "what we've been
seeing is some progressive organizations have been holding their
managers, holding senior leaders closely accountable for development of
people "” through mentoring initiatives, coaching initiatives and
on-the-job training," she says.

Daymond Cox,
founder of the International Society of Six Sigma Certifications in
Blue Ash, says smart organizations are using the economy's downtime to
get stronger.

"Companies and individuals are no
longer paying for, nor can they support in time away, long expensive
training courses or professional development," Cox says. "They are
looking for professional education and training that is focused, lean "”
yet effective. Proactive companies have taken the time to prepare for
their future and outpace their competition as we emerge from the
recession."

In simple terms, Six Sigma is a
complex business strategy that seeks to improve a company's output by
minimizing the number of defects or errors in a product or process.

Cox
is retired from the U.S. Army, which he describes as the largest Six
Sigma implementation worldwide. Companies are using the process "to
save lives, drive down costs, and improve service in all industries
from health care to supply chain and finance."

That's especially critical in today's economy.

"Sell Our Way Out"

Lynn
McInturf, principal of LMA, a Sandler Training franchisee, helps small
to medium companies in Greater Cincinnati boost their sales.

Typically,
as the economy tanks, the sales-training business picks up, she says,
"because companies recognize that the only way to get out of a down
economy is to invest in their salespeople."

From
February to August 2009, "the faucet wasn't running as hard as it used
to be," McInturf says. "People just stopped spending, period. But in
the third and fourth quarters of last year, we had conversations with
presidents, CEOs and owners, and they would say, "¢Hey, listen, we spent
the first six months of this year cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting,
cutting. We've cut every single expense in our business. There's
nothing more to cut. Now, we need to take action and invest in our
people because the only way out of this recession is to sell our way
out of it.'"

Companies are spending again.

"But
they are being more selective about who they are spending it on to make
sure they have the trainable people in place to get the return on it,"
says McInturf, who has owned her company for 15 years.

Overcoming Obstacles

Tony Cipollone says companies are seeking ways to overcome any obstacles employees might have to change.

Cipollone
is a senior consultant at InterPro Teambuilding Systems LLC. The
19-year-old organizational-development company in Wyoming specializes
in change management and leadership development.

The typical problem areas include the company's culture, processes and organization.

"We look at different elements of the system," Cipollone says.

Training
might be just part of the answer, says Cipollone, who's been in the
training-development business more than 20 years. "Companies recognize
that they need to do things differently, and they don't necessarily
have the resources internally to deal with that."

It's especially crucial now for companies to devote the time and money to training.

"If the people don't have their heads in the game, then the change is not going to occur," he says.

Marcellus
agrees: "We've been seeing a lot of requests for total transformation.
Organizations are wanting to take advantage of this time to really look
at their philosophies and strategies so that they can transform
themselves and be much more agile and nimble in this marketplace."

Agility Crucial

As
organizations of all sizes downsized over the last 2½ years, agility
and nimbleness became essential. And not just for companies.

Workers left on the cutting-room floor are exploring training as a competitive edge.

"We
are dealing with a lot of dislocated workers "” people trying to
re-engineer their careers to get employment," says Dennis Ulrich,
executive director of the Workforce Development Center at Cincinnati
State Technical and Community College. "Any program that has a
certificate of some kind is very valuable."

Through
a $5 million BioOhio federal grant to six Ohio community colleges,
Cincinnati State, along with partner Sinclair Community College in
Dayton, is putting together a program to train 117 people in the
pharmaceutical and medical-device industries and to provide lab skills.
Those graduates will remain in the region at various biotech and
pharmaceutical firms.

"We are trying to collaborate to control costs" and get as many people trained as possible, Ulrich says.

Cincinnati
State's workforce center, based in Evendale, also works with more than
65 organizations to help employees develop new skills. That includes
on-site training at companies including GE Aviation, St. Bernard Soap
and Procter & Gamble as well as classroom training.

"When times are difficult, community colleges really rise to the challenge," he says.

Collection of Tools

Social networking is another area of training that is exploding, along with the technology that enables it.

Michael
Loban, co-founder of InfoTrust LLC in Mason, which provides training on
social media, search engine marketing and blogging and other internet
tools, says his company is seeing strong demand.

"Social
media and everything digital make it so simple for staff to manage a
company's web presence," he says. Companies turn to his firm to get
them started.

Social media can be a great
marketing tool, "but it has to be carefully aligned with the company's
general marketing strategy. There has to be a clear separation between
social media and social media marketing," he says.

"Social
media is a collection of tools, a communications platform. If you use
it properly, it can become a great marketing platform."

A
company can build a page on Facebook that leads customers to its
website; then it becomes a matter of digital marketing and web
analytics, Loban says.

InterPro's Cipollone agrees. He sees greater interest in how to master the use of technology.

"Certainly, companies are interested in doing online training or some kind of training where they can use technology," he says.

Change
is never easy, so training firms devote time to researching how to make
it less difficult for companies and their employees.

Chris
Halter, co-founder of Focal Point Inc., College Hill, works with
organizations ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to mom-and-pop
businesses and sole proprietors.

Most of his company's clients are in Greater Cincinnati, New York City and Sweden.

Training
is in transition, he says. Companies want to understand not just the
behavior but what's behind the behavior. "Training was very mechanical
and attempted to break the human down more into a commodity than a
human being. Now, we take the person more holistically."

After
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "people started to question their beliefs
and their values," Halter says. "Employees, instead of asking what they
were doing, started asking why they were doing it."

Then
came the Great Recession. "The things that people valued and put their
trust in were shaken," which affected the workplace, Halter says.

Companies
also look to firms such as Halter's to find ways to reward employees
other than with money. "They want to retain good employees, and they
don't always have the financial piece to offer them. They're looking
for other ways to satisfy them," he says.

Companies
adopting a more "holistic" approach discovered flextime or arrangements
such as allowing a worker to bring his dog to work are valued by
employees, he says.

Patricia
Pope, CEO of Pope & Associates, a global consulting firm
specializing in diversity, inclusion and cultural change since 1976,
helps organizations understand what impact that having fewer workers
doing the same amount of work has on relationships.

"While
most people are happy to have a job right now, there tends to be more
stress and less patience with one another," she says. "Effective
managers recognize this and are more involved with their people to keep
things running smoothly."

Cox, from the International Society of Six Sigma Certifications, says organizations are coming to his company to gain
efficiencies, yet also retain their employees.

"Poor
implementation of Six Sigma takes the focus from improving the
process and focuses on staff reduction," he says. "This approach is
common, yet destructive. Our approach to driving down costs is not to
reduce staff as a primary means of cost savings. Employees are most
often your most valuable, and yet undervalued, asset on your books and
in your company."

Cipollone says companies are
launching reorganization initiatives to more efficiently handle the
workload that's been left to a downsized staff.

"That
kind of activity creates new teams," he says. That means employees must
learn new roles and figure out how they fit into the new processes.

And that's music to the ears of the training and professional development industry.

Get Ahead: Top Training Areas

Innovation: Companies are seeking new ways to do things in both processes and product development.

Informal training: Up to 80% of learning is gained through informal
interactions. Organizations are looking for how to capture this
information and formalize/disseminate it.

Training in support of business objectives: Stakeholders become
business partners, so ideally, the learning environment becomes part of
strategy development"”but it must be tied to the business strategy and
help drive it.

Training focused on
performance improvement: Training has a tighter integration with
performance management systems and development plans. If tied in with
career paths, it can boost employee retention by mapping out a
potential future.

Web 2.0 tools and
mobile learning: Greater collaboration and a focus on short bursts of
just-in-time learning about new processes or products are becoming
popular. Podcasts and other training delivered on mobile devices are
growing.

Sales training and customer training: These speak to the core of the business and increase customer loyalty.

Employee retention/succession planning: This is a demographic issue
that worsens as an improving economy opens new opportunities. To avoid
future turnover, companies are asking for training on talent management.